Weekend reading

The benefit of being low-grade sick is that you can read half the known internet while you go through a box of tissues*

Question: Can Wikipedia survive? 

Naive Answer: Yes. If our project at The Dowse is any example, there's still a butt-ton of sectors who are yet to make the move into contributing. Less Naive Answer: I have no idea how the arcana of Wikipedia management works, and that's a real weakness of the system.

the best marketing strategy is a “transformational project” brilliantly produced

Article about Michael Kaiser and his new book Curtains: The Future of the Arts in America. Focused on the performing arts (and of course the American context) but it's hard to deny his point about artistic uniformity:

“Rather than conceiving great projects—with enough lead time to find the resources needed to pay for them—too many organizations are planning art that is inexpensive, undemanding and, frankly, boring.”

Standing with a pile of my books and others on the women who also invented Impressionism side by side with their male colleagues, I wanted to hold a banner declaring that this institution wilfully and persistently distorts knowledge of art’s histories.

Griselda Pollock does a de(con)struction job on some art gallery puffery (oh yes - we're all guilty of it) and the National Gallery in London's claims for its exhibition on Paul Durand-Ruel, "the man who invented Impressionism". One of the most enlivening things I've read in a while.

Scholarship in the service of business

Long article in the New York Times about curators from public institutions moving into the dealer gallery world, which ends with the rather oblique line "Often the interests of a curator are somewhat unaligned with the necessities of a gallery.”

*(Or finish watching Jane the Virgin)